"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--F.A. Hayek

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25 September 2011

Let Us Count the Ways

An idiotic post from the increasingly idiotic Paul Krugman regarding the Solyndra Scandal. This company was given more than $500 million of taxpayer money bankrolling a company that just happened to back the Obama campaign. Relativists will rightly point out that Republicans give sweetheart deals to companies that back them all the time. Libertarians will point out that government shouldn't be in the business of trying to determine which products will receive any form of subsidy; a pox on both their houses and the fact that both sides do the same thing doesn't make it less noisome.

Anyway, Krugman's post in its entirety:

The Solyndra Scandal

Haven’t written about this. But it is indeed a terrible scandal, because the private sector never ever puts money into ventures that end up failing:

That is the whole post.

He fails, of course, to realize the difference between private investors betting on what consumers will get behind via voluntary exchange in the market and government using money taken from individuals under pain of law and giving it to select individuals as political patronage. The failure of a private concern is equivalent to the government giving a half billion dollars of other people's money to a private firm in return for political support, regardless of the fact that the firm's business plan was fatally flawed from the start. In February, the government also gave up its "first lien" position in an asinine bid to attract more private investment into the failing company. So the chances of American's getting any of their money back is not virtually nil. It is absolutely zero.

Creative destruction, innovation, the beauty and power of the market are lost on the Progressive. Government deciding what is best for you, determined by base political calculus, is the way of things. And anyone else who disagrees with this worldview is just too stupid to realize how right, how brilliant. the Progressives are.